>> On Jun 10, 2013, at 8:55 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com> wrote:>> My doctrine, as spelled out over the years in this archive, is that the> model for USA public schools at least is you're educating "virtual> presidents". It makes no difference if they're inclined towards> construction. We have presidents in every walk of life and of every> religion and gender. It's not about what you actually *do* in the sense of> "career".>>> Virtual presidents? And what do they eat? Virtual food? Do they live in> virtual houses and pay virtual rent?>

It's a similar idea to the IBM idea of a "virtual machine". When you sitdown at a 360/370 running CMS or whatever, you are granted the "virtualreality" of having an entire computer. You can mount devices, run jobs,engage peripherals, as if this expensive mainframe were yours to run. Ofcourse in reality you're just one more user, each of which has the samevirtual reality.

A "virtual president" is someone with the character of willing to beresponsible for the successful operation of the USA democracy, which I call"USA OS" (OS for operating system).

In my writings on all this, you'll see one of the practical consequences isa different way to design websites if you're a governmental agency.Instead of trying to model a "lobby" with "reception" and lots ofhard-to-find rooms, you model being the Secretary or Director of whateverand give browsers more of a bird's eye view of the vista from your point ofview. The Bureau of Indian Affairs gives you lots of ESRI-like overlays.

Some of that has been going on, but there's long way to go if the Americanpeoples want to take maximum advantage of their shared system(s) ofgovernance.

> I can sum up this whole exchange and our differences. While you were> traveling between international schools I was signing up for free lunch.> For me and the people I hire, be they foreign born or not, school is like> real estate. It's all about vocation, vocation, vocation.>

President is a vocation. Diplomat is a vocation. Eagle Scout is avocation.... why is this some big difference on that score?

Instead of "free lunch" or food stamps, our family lived on fresh produceabout to be composted. That was during an economic downturn. I lived offthe business credit line and charitable donations and Food Not Bombs. Itried to make some headway in trucking, helping a database guy /transportation engineer who already plots trips for major amounts oftonnage. As a solo coder himself, he could barely afford me. I taught atSaturday Academy for a pittance, and for free. I took in a corporaterefugee from General Dynamics (a dead end job) who lived in my basement andhelped scavenge food.

> And another thing I realized this last year. These young people that take> it that way, be they foreign born or not, will be the next new americans,> not much different from the previous batch. The rest will be working at> Starbucks paying off their school loans. If I were an economics major (or> sociology major) I think a fascinating thesis would be to study the> mobility patterns of the last two generations (30 years). I don't think> there has ever been such a significant flipping since WWII.>> Bob Hansen>

One should expect several vocations in the course of a lifetime.

As I was saying earlier in this thread, you don't always have adequateinformation going in, nor a sufficient realization of your opportunities.A lot of vocations come to seem like a "dead end" after a while. If therewere a better safety net, you could more safely make a transition to a newpath.

That's a great argument for a better safety net (one of the best outthere), as people happy in their jobs is a public / shared good, whereaspeople hating their work is a recipe for depression and dislocation, lostproductivity, on-the-job injuries and so on -- also malpractice, breakingstuff, lousy customer service, snapping under stress, going postal.

How to get rid of "dead end jobs" even while not eliminating the jobs thatneed doing? How to end exploitation of one "class" by another?

Suppose you're young and healthy and want to learn a foreign language.Suppose you go to Russia and work on a railroad, not as a slave or coolie,but as a graduate student (jokes apply).

Some hours a day you're out laying track, surveying, pounding in spikes.Other hours you're in your high tech encampment with jacuzzi domes, wifi,wii, field trips, lectures, courses in local history, cuisine. It's a 14month stint, after which you'll be moving to Thailand to work in thefishing industry, also for academic credit.

If all goes well, in five years you'll get to join a truck caravan fromIstanbul to Kabul (a freight route even now) and get that Harvard Businessdegree you've been coveting.

A lot like Peace Corps no? But in every direction. People help in NorthAmerica as well. We have a Russian girl right now, SE FNB chapter, helpingto feed the poor Americans.

My friend Greg is going to Peru to study the collapse of fishing stocks, tomaybe apply some of what he learns to the Baltic region. He's been atPrinceton recently, speaks fluent Russian, also Woods Hole.http://www.whoi.edu/

Let people turn their dead end jobs into work-study opportunities, and havethe "Global U" provide a safety net that lets people easily change theircourses and workload, as they discover their true leadings.